“The Secret Room My Landlord Never Told Me About”

When I first moved into Apartment 3B on Halstead Street, I thought I'd found the deal of a lifetime. Two bedrooms, high ceilings, vintage windows, and a view that didn’t face another brick wall. It was oddly affordable, the kind of place that makes you pause and think, "What's the catch?"

The landlord, Mr. Hargrove, was an elderly man who spoke in clipped sentences and carried the air of someone who’d seen too much. I asked him, half-jokingly, if the place was haunted. He smiled, tight and awkward, and said only, "You’ll find it quiet enough."

For the first few weeks, it was. Quiet. Peaceful, even. I worked remotely as a freelance data analyst, and the serenity helped me focus. But then, things started to feel... wrong.

At exactly 3:13 AM each night, I’d hear soft noises. Not from the hallway. From beneath me. A dragging sound, slow and heavy, like someone pulling a bag of wet laundry across wooden boards. At first, I dismissed it as an old-building quirk. Pipes, rats, maybe even a neighbor below me.

Until I remembered—there was no apartment beneath mine. The 3rd floor was the bottom floor of the building.

I started staying up, watching the time. And like clockwork, 3:13 AM brought the same noise. Every. Single. Night.

It became an obsession.

One afternoon, while vacuuming the hallway outside my bedroom, the rug caught on something. A corner lifted, revealing a faint square outline in the wood. I peeled the rug back completely. There it was: an old hatch door, flush with the floor, with a rusted iron ring at one corner.

I pressed around it. Hollow underneath.

I debated for days whether to open it. Curiosity gnawed at me like an itch under the skin. One night, I searched the building’s original blueprints online. Floorplans from the 1940s showed a Room 0 beneath the 3rd floor, marked "Unfinished Basement (Condemned)."

I printed them. Took them to Mr. Hargrove.

He barely looked at the paper before sliding it back.

"That room doesn't exist anymore," he said. "It was sealed after the fire. Leave it alone."

"What fire?" I asked.

He looked up, eyes sharper than I’d ever seen. "Some things are meant to stay buried."

He closed the door.

That night, I couldn’t resist. I grabbed a crowbar, flashlight, and gloves. At 3:12 AM, I stood over the hatch. My heart hammered as I pried it open. The boards gave with a loud crack, revealing a narrow staircase descending into complete darkness.

The air that rushed out was cold. Stale. It smelled like mold, rust, and something else—a faint metallic tang. Blood.

I went down.

The staircase creaked under my weight. At the bottom, a narrow hallway stretched forward. The walls were stone, lined with peeling floral wallpaper. I passed what looked like old doors, each one marked with numbers that had faded almost to nothing.

At the end of the hallway stood a red door, half-burned, with the number 0 painted on it in faded black.

Room 0.

My fingers shook as I turned the knob. The door groaned open to reveal a small chamber, lit only by the beam of my flashlight. In the center was an old wooden chair. On it—a bundle of fabric.

I stepped closer. It was a child's blanket, dusty and torn. Beneath it, a tape recorder.

I pressed play.

A man's voice, cracked and weak, came through.

"If you're hearing this, then you've found it. I lived in 3B. Like you. Thought I could help. Thought I could stop it. But I was wrong. It lives down here. It feeds off you. Your thoughts, your fears. The longer you stay, the more it becomes you."

The tape ended in a piercing static, then silence.

I backed away, but something shifted in the dark. A whisper. Not words, just a sound—a breath.

I ran. Up the stairs, slammed the hatch, nailed it shut. I moved the rug back, shaking all over.

I didn’t sleep that night. Or the one after.

Two days later, I started packing. I broke my lease without notice. Mr. Hargrove didn’t argue. He handed my deposit back without a word, like he’d expected it.

But that wasn't the end.

Two weeks after I left, I received a voicemail. No caller ID. Just static and one sentence:

"We remember you."

Since then, I’ve moved three times. Every time, I check the floor. I don’t sleep at 3:13 AM. I don’t want to know if the sound follows me.

But sometimes I hear it.

Just beneath me. Dragging. Waiting.